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14 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Political correctness destroyed this film, 13 January 2003
9/10
Author: chuckju from Los Angeles, CA

This is the ONLY example of which I'm aware where the complete loss of a film is ignored by all media and critics. I saw this documentary on its original release in, I believe, 1967. It was very disturbing because of the miles of animal bones and bodies it displayed. It squarely placed the blame on both the whites AND the black native inhabitants. And the latter is, imho, the reason this film has disappeared. You can't find the lousiest, most edited version, let alone the original. And this movie was made by Academy Award winners for an earlier foreign film, so it's not like it was just a throwaway cheepie.

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Damning Documentary of Humanity, 24 October 2004
10/10
Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

Sent to Africa to make the next Mondo Cane movie the film makers found themselves in the middle of several revolutions. What they would film would form the basis of a damning attack on everyone, both black and white, involved in the shift in power on the Dark Continent.

I've watched the three versions of this film and I'm a fan of all of them. Interestingly the one I like the least is the original cut of the film which has several snide comments and re-dubbed voices that make the film truly rude and cruel for no good reason. The original cut goes out of its way to have a holier than thou view that is missing from both of the English cuts. The original cut also has several more minutes of animal cruelty that is completely uncalled for.

This film ran into serious trouble upon its original release because charges were brought, though later found to be false, that the film makers had paid some of the soldiers to kill some one so that they could film it. (this charge would form the basis for The Wild Eye, a fictional film about the making of a mondo movie made by another Mondo Cane director) Considering all of the the death and destruction in this film I find it hard to believe that anyone would have had to have been paid to kill anyone.

Yes, its a tough film, but it leaves no one with clean hands, even the film makers.

See this film. It will make you think.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
At some point during the last fifteen minutes of this movie I heard, 2 March 2007
Author: Reed Richards from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

somebody say, "Disgusting!" and when I realized I was the person who had said it (I was alone) I also realized that I didn't just mean the movie was disgusting but that I was disgusting for sitting through it. You want a spoiler? Here's a spoiler: the movie shows people getting killed, the camera sharing the killers' point of view, and not just once but twice, ad hoc executions of men, the second of whom is desperate to survive, to explain himself, but instead he is shot point blank twice by an affectless white mercenary, who says, "I'll do it," and walks up to him and shoots him dead. No due process, no proof of any crime except the voice-over's say-so. The first execution, about a minute earlier in the movie, is by a firing squad, sloppily carried out, and once the man is on his knees, face in the dirt, either dead or seconds away from it, a final, egregious shot is fired, apparently hitting the victim in the face and sending up a splash of dirt and blood.

If you haven't figured out by halfway through that this is the direction the movie is headed in, then you have been sucked in and manipulated by probably the most cynical excuse for a documentary ever made. Red flags immediate go up with the film's opening claim that the camera is completely objective and only reports what it sees. The film then proceeds systematically to contradict this claim by mocking everything that comes before the lens. The movie pretends empathy for the displaced, abused and murdered whites in Kenya, then shows them behaving ridiculously and exposes their complacency. A white judge sentencing Mau Mau rebels to extremely harsh punishments (though not necessarily harsh for their crimes) stifles a yawn. Telling details, you'd think, cleverly captured, except when they take their place next to other instances of derisive sound effects and people (supposedly) saying ludicrous things in ludicrous voices with their backs to the camera.

The movie combines its mocking with the kind of prurience you'd find in 1950s "sun worshipper" magazines and then with out and out salaciousness. In a scene obviously staged, the movie illustrates its completely racist point that black men, given the opportunity, lust after white women, by putting a group of clueless Africans in front of a white stripper. They don't seem to know how to react as she caresses her body, and when she encourages one man to remove the pasties from her nipples, and he does so only because he was instructed to, the poor, embarrassed man is left looking at the pasties in his hands as if he doesn't know what has just happened. The bizarre scene is then punctuated by a revelation of the stripper's face, which has been angled away from the camera to this point, and it is horsey and grotesque, with a smile that reveals frighteningly long, vampirish teeth.

If you've been fooled into thinking the film has any empathy whatsoever, you should be undeceived by the episode in which the film makers, along with some German colleagues, try to land their two planes in rebel territory in Zambia? Rwanda?, the Germans landing first and being swarmed by rebels who take them captive and burn their plane. The Italian film makers get away as their plane is shot at, leaving the Germans to their fate, and the movie excuses itself from any followup when the voice-over says, "At least they were still alive." It occurs to you at this point that the Germans may have been patsies, decoys sent in to test the waters, the proverbial canaries in the mineshaft. It occurs to you that the film makers are guilty of much more than just disingenuous bad taste. By the time we get to the animal carnage it should be clear that what we are watching is pure adventure porn. It finds the place in the viewer that is disgusted by man's inhumanity to man and to nature, panders like crazy, and then treats us to scene after scene after scene of slaughter and dismemberment. Is there empathy for the animals? Can you imagine there is in a movie so up to its chin in blood and guts? The movie goes so far as to show stillborn calves being pulled from slaughtered elephants. Point of view is a real issue here. These film makers had to have participated willingly in these travesties (including the human murders at the end) in order to turn them around and toss them in the viewers face, purposefully making you feel implicated, while they throw their hands up and say, "Hey, the camera only reports what it sees." This is a movie that lies even when it tells the truth. This is a movie that pretends sympathy with the animals while displaying almost complete ignorance of their habits and behavior. This is a movie that can't tell the difference between a stork and a vulture. This is a movie that cheapens the value of a human life for the sake of a spectacle. This is a movie that wallows in rotting corpses, the victims of political upheavals, the aftermaths of colonialism and other versions of political opportunism and corruption, and then ignores politics, ignores causes, for the sake of wading into rivers of blood, and then the movie says, "Don't blame us. The camera only reports what it sees."

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7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Impressive, 15 October 2003
10/10
Author: Aspsusa from Finland

This just aired on the small (digital) "culture" channel here in Finland. I am not sure whether this was the censored or the uncensored version - if this was the censored one I don't even want to think about what might be in the uncensored version.

Very very very impressive photography and - above all - editing. It *is* in parts very gruesome (esp. animal lovers should be prepared for some depictions of mindless cruelty) - but it also shows beautiful things, black, white, animal and floral.

That this is hard to come by today I can understand, it is just impossible politically incorrect (and must have been so at the time too). The makers of this movie seem to sympathise with everyone and no-one

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6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Words cannot explain the dilemma I have with this film, 23 November 2006
5/10
Author: druss44121-1 from US

Truly presents the world as a dark place without a happy ending, or an ending at all, a world full of intolerance part of the human condition. Even worse, there is great indifference towards this intolerance, even displayed by the filmmakers themselves as they arguably exploit the rape of Africa, equally marvelled by the human tragedy and the cinematic scope of Africa in crisis. Yet, the images are genuine, if not presented in a genuine way, and the use of editing, music, and all the techniques of cinema masterfully create a tour de force that commands debate, thought, and maybe - someday- action.

Is this perhaps an example of what "art" really is, for better and for worse?

The fact that it took me over a year to really put into words why this film affected me so much, and yet was still villainous in many ways (a paradox to be sure), makes me think that it is.

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Africa Blood and Guts ... and a tribe of rock and rollers???, 22 April 2004
Author: squeezebox from United States

AFRICA ADDIO, more commonly known as AFRICA-BLOOD AND GUTS (so named by infamous exploitation distributor Jerry Gross), is undeniably masterful at holding one's attention. But it makes the sleaze and sensationalism of MONDO CANE seem like something produced by Walt Disney.

This movie is insane. It switches randomly from horrifying to absurd to educational to beautiful to creepy to disturbing to ... well, you get the idea.

Pumped up relentlessly by it's makers to be a serious, unbiased look at the political and social upheaval occurring in Africa during the late sixties, the movie is about as far from that as you can imagine. So many scenes are obviously fabricated outright or manipulated by the filmmakers, it's difficult to tell what's real and what's staged. In a way, however, this makes the movie even more fascinating, though more for the shameless exploits of the filmmakers than the subject matter.

There are such ridiculous scenes as a tribe of African natives emerging from their tents to play a bluesy rock song, complete with a horn section and funky piano and a scene in which African women get dressed up in "civilized" attire. These are juxtaposed with scenes of executions and rioting, footage of mass graves and poachers at work. The accusation that the filmmakers actually incited much of the violence displayed onscreen is difficult to discount completely.

Once again, there's plenty of live animal slaughter (an elephant being speared to death is nearly impossible to sit through unflinchingly), much of which is perpetrated by so-called "hunters", who have the nerve to act proud at having shot an elephant to death, after it's already been exhausted by a helicopter taunting it.

The whole movie makes you furious at the treatment of the people of the country, having their land invaded by outsiders who force them to conform to their own customs, and works (perhaps unintentionally) as a very disturbing parallel to the white settlers treatment of the Native Americans centuries ago.

Recently released as part of a MONDO box set by Blue Underground, which contains both the uncut English version, as well as the much more violent "Director's Cut." The director's version contains the infamous sequence in which a hippopotamus is speared to death.

Recommended for MONDO fans. Others will probably be too disgusted to get through more than a few minutes of it. The making of this movie was an inspiration of Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

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6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
One of the Most Important Films of the Last 50 Years., 19 June 2006
8/10
Author: Chris Barry from Canada

This frank, unsettling eye-witness account of the chaos in Africa after the pullout of the English, French and Portuguese is one of the most incredible films I've ever seen. It should be shown to everyone, everywhere, man, woman or child to help them understand what happened to Africa and why it's not simply 'poverty' or 'debt' that created the horrible state of impoverishment on that continent from Sudan to Angola.

This film is impressive because it shows the cost of war, not only to men, women and children, but also to game preserves, the environment and to the next generation that inherits these conflicts.

One of the most unsettling things in the documentary was the recorded footage of Hutus killing Tutsis in Rwanda. No this isn't 1993. This is 1966! Nothing has changed. Also there are shocking scenes of Africans in Sudan mass executing Arabs in makeshift prison camps. Funny in 2006, the Junjaweed Arab militia is currently massacring Sudanese blacks.

This is a film that will enraged you, but if you're white and from a North-Western European background like me, you can't help but feel that this is a portrait of a world we've sown.

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12 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Kept My Attention But I Was Mortified, 27 September 2004
7/10
Author: rwduke from Austin

This is a very well done documentary. But what it shows will mortify you. I was yelling at the screen.

The atrocities against the animals in this documentary absolutely made me sick. Animals are slaughtered relentlessly, cruelly and for no reason other than the sport of it. I wanted those wild animals to rip their killers to shreds. At least once it would have been nice to see one of the poachers ripped to shreds by the elephants, lions and hippos.

It never ceases to sicken me how a man with a gun thinks he has really accomplished something by shooting an animal. Watching the men stand proudly with their gun over the carcass of an animal for a photo just makes me sick. They should all have been fed to the lions.

This documentary proves one thing and one thing only. Humans are the sickest and cruelest animals on the planet.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A powerful if not long film, 22 December 2007
7/10
Author: As_Cold_As_Ice from Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

After the first two Mondo Canes, famous Italian documenters Jacopetti and Prosperi went deep into Africa, which during the mid sixties was in a period of change from foreign rule to self governing. The resulting footage shot formed Africa Addio.

The film is based around the changing power structures in Africa in the sixties, after the withdraw of European rule. In a nutshell, the film is comprised of two different types of scenes; ones that involve the killing of animals by either the poachers or the African citizens, and ones that detail the humanity side, of genocides and mass killings, of exploitation, shown through helicopter rides over the thousands of littered dead bodies, and close encounters with the zealous and angry soldiers.

These scenes are when the film is at it's most dangerous and evocative for me; the footage of the film makers in a car, trying to wade through the chaos of a street in Zanzibar, before having a gun butt rammed through their window, and being pulled out to be executed. Only the quick work of a police officer, recognising their Italian, saved them for their death, as explained in the excellent documentary Godfathers of Mondo.

Another scene involves the film makers plane attempting to land on an old airstrip, before they wisely decide against it after witnessing the plane before them being burnt and the passengers being held captive.

Unfortunately, these menacing but short scenes are the highlight of the entire film, with quite a large portion of the remaining movie being based around the slaughter of animals, in a large and distressingly graphic collection of scenes. While appropriate within the context of the film, after seeing scores of elephants de-trunked, hippos skinned and antelope speared, one becomes queasy, and simply fast-forwards the offending scenes.

In essence, if Jacopetti and Prosperi had focused on the political and social-economic developments in East Africa a little more, Africa Addio would have been a more concise and rewarding affair.

That being said, Africa Addio is still remarkably well shot, edited and scored. So while the large amount of animal violence can be off-putting, it still is a good film with merit.

7/10 (As a sidenote, according to the film, the footage by helicopter of Zanzibar, taken from January 18 - 20 is the only known footage taken in the country during the genocide of Arabs in the area by the black Africans.)

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Africa Addio could have been so much more, 7 November 2006
5/10
Author: Thomas Jensen from Denmark

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Africa Addio contains some really strong scenes of animal cruelty and human death. However the editing, lack of storyline and historical facts in general disappointed me. If the directors had taken their time to research the events they portrait, the movie would have come out much better and informative. Some scenes are beautifully shot and made, but others seems added to just to shock and disturb the viewer. Generally the whole "Mondo" genre needs much more depth and facts, instead of the pure intention to shock the audience.

Africa Addio is a movie that could have been so much more, but lands as an average gore filled documentary which display the lack of insight of the directors. Filming animals getting killed for sports, people executed, stacks of severed hands, rotten corpses along the road and mass graves for the sheer shock value seems uninspiring and sometimes plain dumb. The creators of Africa Addio invented the Mondogenre - but at the same time, they hit a new rock bottom for the whole documentary genre. It could have been so much more, but ended up real sad. I have seen the "Directors Cut" of the movie - which according to the directors should be "more political, historical and informative", all themes lack, and a movie which could have been highly educational end up as a sad shocker. Mondo Addio.

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